


memories get the best of us

by RMarie124



Category: Avatar: Legend of Korra
Genre: Angst, F/M, Post-Avatar: The Legend of Korra, a hint of romance, current confusion, past linzin, resolved ish tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-05
Updated: 2020-09-05
Packaged: 2021-03-07 00:14:00
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,862
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26307625
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RMarie124/pseuds/RMarie124
Summary: Now that the new spirit portal has been opened, Tenzin has a lot more on his hands than before. Per his and Pema's request, Lin has been staying on Air Temple Island to help out. It's not weird at all, and Lin and Tenzin can handle it...Right?
Relationships: Lin Beifong & Tenzin, Lin Beifong/Tenzin
Comments: 11
Kudos: 97





	memories get the best of us

**Author's Note:**

> This was one of the first Linzin fics I wrote, but it took a couple months for me to actually get it at a place where I was happy with it. I wanted to write something where their past gets the better of them, and this is the result. 
> 
> I love this pairing a lot, I just think it's so fascinating to explore.

Lin was on Air Temple Island upon the request of Tenzin, and to her surprise, Pema as well. Tenzin had taken on quite a few new responsibilities since Harmonic Convergence on top of everything he already had to do, and Pema had requested an extra hand. Plus, the kids had been requesting that “Aunt Lin” come over ever since she stood her ground to protect them four years previously.

After multiple requests, including a surprise visit from Jinora, Lin had finally acquiesced and had been staying on the island for almost two weeks. She had been helping Pema with the children, keeping track of them and making sure they stayed out of trouble. It was strange, but Lin did secretly like the kids, and she appreciated how quiet it was on the island. She and Pema had been getting along alright, better than they had in the past. Lin kept a respectful distance from Tenzin at all times, and if they needed to speak together privately about Republic City business, they always did so on the balcony that had a view of the city. The last thing she wanted was for people to get the wrong idea.

She wandered the halls after helping Pema with the work that needed to be done, simply letting herself roam the hallways that she used to play in as a child, and sneak through as a young adult. She found herself in the lower section of the Temple where the training room was. There were a lot of good memories associated with that room, ones that made her smile when she thought back to them. She, Tenzin, Kya, and Bumi used to spar together frequently when they were younger.

A sound from the room caught her attention and she poked her head in. The sight before her made her freeze, her heart pounding in her chest. Tenzin was training, going through his more advanced forms. He had taken off his outer robes, leaving him only in a loose pair of pants. Lin couldn’t tear her eyes away even if she wanted to. His movements were graceful and fluid, yet tension simmered under the surface. He was still in as good of shape as she remembered him being when they were young, and _oh_.

Heat rushed through her body as she recalled the times when they were still together, sparring down here in this very room. They’d be down to the bare minimum of clothing, sweat dripping down their bodies, tension permeable. How many times had they run back to Tenzin’s room, barely managing to keep it together until the door closed behind them? How many times had he taken her fast and rough against the wall? She hated her body for betraying her in this moment, knowing full well that she shouldn’t feel this way about him now. And yet she couldn’t help it.

Tenzin turned and saw her staring at him. Lin schooled her features into as neutral of an expression as she could, knowing full well she was blushing. Tenzin was breathing heavily, and looked as startled to see her as she herself felt at getting caught.

“Lin.”

Oh _Spirits_ his voice. He used to say her name like that when they were on the floor of the training room, trying to remind themselves to get to his room.

“Tenzin.” She rasped out. “I’m sorry, I should have announced myself earlier, but you just seemed so focused…”

“It’s alright.” He responded. “Is there something you need?”

She shook her head, and tried not to be distracted by the beads of sweat rolling down his chest. “I was just wandering around, and I guess I came here out of force of habit.”

He motioned for her to come inside, and she instantly knew that this was going to turn into a dangerous situation very quickly. Now that their friendship seemed stable after years of estrangement, she didn’t want to loose him again. This seemed like the moment that would make or break their future.

“Would you like to join me?” He offered.

Lin froze. “Are you sure that’s a good idea?”

“Pema’s not going to mind us training together, if that’s what you’re worried about.” He said. “We don’t have to act so formally around each other,Lin. We’re old friends.”

“That’s not what I’m worried about.” She said quietly. “We don’t have a very clean track record with sparring sessions.”

They looked at each other, and she could very easily see blush creeping up his neck. “Ah, yes. Well…” He looked away. “I apologize if my suggestion made you uncomfortable.”

Lin laughed despite herself. “That’s the _last_ thing it did.” Then she put her face in her hands. “Spirits, I’m sorry if _I_ made you uncomfortable just then. That was inappropriate of me.”

It was Tenzin’s turn to laugh. “Don’t worry, Lin. It’s alright.”

“I guess one session wouldn’t hurt.” She shrugged. “But the second this gets out of hand, we stop.”

He nodded. “Agreed.”

She shed her armor, meeting him on the grounds of a casual sparring session. She tried to ignore the way his eyes tracked her movements, and the way his heart rate changed. They walked in a circle around each other, mostly so Lin could warm up.

“Rules?” Lin asked.

Tenzin shook his head. “We’re just training. No falls or winners.”

She struck first, if only to take her mind off of how both of their bodies were betraying them. Since they were inside, she opted for smaller rocks. She didn’t want to destroy the temple (again), after all.

Tenzin dodged the projectile easily with a measured side step. In response, he sent a burst of wind flying at her. She crossed her arms in front of her face, bringing up a shield of rock. He jumped up and tried to knock her off her feet with a more focused burst of air, but she shifted the ground beneath her feet, dodging the blow. Lin kicked up a small series of rocks, and watched as Tenzin blocked all of them. At the last minute, she sent another rock flying at him and was stunned when he leaned back, balancing on one leg, the other stuck out in front of him. She knew she looked shocked, yet impressed, and he gave her a smug look in return.

When they were younger, that smug look always goaded her into trying harder, pushing them to try and out-bend each other. It would turn into excuses for them to get closer and closer until they’d be chest to chest or a heap on the floor.

Lin found that Tenzin’s smug look was having the exact same effect on her now, and she cursed internally. Tenzin struck next, jumping on an air scooter and spinning towards her. She moved out of the way just in time, and chased Tenzin with a short wall of rock. He jumped off the scooter and turned to face her.

“You’re going easy on me, Beifong.” He teased.

His teasing lit a fire in her belly and she almost called it off in that very moment. But, if he really wanted this to skirt the edges of danger, she was happy to play along. She cocked her head to the side. “You’ll just have to put up a better fight then, Ten.”

Despite his tendency to be light on his feet, Lin felt his next move easily. She pulled up a wall to deflect the strong, focused bursts of air he sent at her.

“That’s not an air bending move,” She called out, while breaking down the wall in pieces and sending them flying at him.

“I learned it from Uncle Zuko.” He countered, crouching to the ground and trying to knock her off her feet.

They circled around each other again for a moment, both breathing heavily. Lin found herself distracted by Tenzin’s hands, remembering how they felt ghosting across her skin. She took a shuddering breath, trying to force her mind to focus.

“You haven’t called me ‘Ten’ in a long time.” He remarked.

She shrugged. “We haven’t exactly been in a situation where I would.”

She’d only call him that when it was just them, when they were sparring, or when they were saying things that made her blush just remembering them. Tenzin seemed to recall that at the same time as she did, as his blush mirrored hers.

Tenzin came towards her, and she defended his attack, before retaliating with her own. They jumped and ran around the room, dealing blows and defending them. Lin couldn’t help but feel like this was some sort of catharsis for them, as if they just needed to fight each other for the last remnants of tension to dissipate.

She was lying to herself if she said that the tension was dissipating, though.

Tenzin sent a wave of air towards her, and she jumped up to avoid it. She came down hand first, diving it into the ground and sending a shockwave towards Tenzin. This time, he wasn’t fast enough and it knocked him down. He lay there for a moment, and she walked over to him. Lin knew it was a rookie mistake, but she didn’t care. She held out her hand.

“Need help, old man?” She teased. She was fully prepared to be either blasted across the room, or flipped so that she was on the ground as well.

Tenzin moved to flip her at the same moment that she began to pull backwards, and she ended up stumbling and falling half on top of him. They both froze, and Lin instantly gained purchase on the floor to make sure there was no-one else close to them.

“We need to get up.” Her voice was barely above a whisper. She was worried that if she spoke louder, it would shatter the delicate balance between honest mistake and _mistake._

But Tenzin was looking at her in a way that she hadn’t been looked at in so long, their fingers were laced together, and they were so _so close_. She was stuck between wanting and knowing that they had to stop this right now. The longer she felt him pressed up against her, the harder the part of her that wanted him fought.

“We do.” Tenzin finally said, while making no move to get up.

“ _Ten,_ ” She breathed out. “I don’t want to ruin this.”

He closed his eyes. “Don’t call me that, not when we’re like this.”

Lin felt like her heart was going to beat right out of her chest. How could she have been this stupid to agree to spar with him? They both knew that it always ended like this, and yet they had both walked right into it. She rolled herself off of him to lay on her back before she could think twice about the decision.

“I’m sorry.” She whispered. “I’ll leave first thing tomorrow.”

“No.” His voice was firm. “Lin, you don’t have to leave because of what just happened. It would raise suspicion more than anything.”

“How do we work around this?” She turned to look at him, and found him looking at her. “If we can’t act informally around each other, if we can’t spar with each other, how is it going to work for me to come here and visit as anyone other than Chief Beifong?”

Tenzin sighed. “We need to talk about what happened. We’ve been avoiding it for so long now.”

Lin laughed weakly. “We need to face it head on like an earthbender. Sometimes I think I spent too much time around you and Uncle Twinkletoes when I was younger.”

“We’ll talk after dinner.” He said. “Out on the pavilion.”

———————————————

The sun hung low in the sky by the time they all finished dinner and the ensuing chaos of cleaning it up. Lin waited for Tenzin on the pavilion as he said goodnight to his younger children and helped his wife put Rohan to bed.

“Aunt Lin?” Came a soft voice before her. She turned around, slightly startled, to find Jinora.

“Yes, Jinora?” She frowned lightly. “Is everything okay?”

“I actually came to ask you that.” Jinora stepped onto the pavilion and stood in front of Lin. “You and dad were acting weird at dinner.”

“I… we were?” She said, trying to feign nonchalance.

“Is everything okay between you two?” Jinora looked concerned. “We love having you here, and want you to be able to come back.”

Lin’s expression softened, and she placed a hand on Jinora’s shoulder. “Jinora, please don’t worry about what’s going on between your father and I. It’s not your responsibility to fret over things that we should have worked out years ago, okay?”

“Daddy still loves you. You know that, right?” Jinora looked solemn, like she was telling Lin a secret that she shouldn’t know. “It’s okay if you still love him, too. Love is meant to be given.”

Lin didn’t know what to say, and everything she thought of gave more away than she thought was wise. “Thank you, Jinora.”

She caught sight of Tenzin coming towards him, a confused expression on his face. Lin told Jinora that she and Tenzin had to talk privately now, and absolutely no spying on them, please and thank you.

“Is Jinora okay?” Tenzin asked, once they were seated together on the ground.

Lin waved her hand. “She’s fine. She came here concerned about how things were between us. I told her that she doesn’t need to worry about things that you and I should have talked about years ago.”

Tenzin nodded.

“She also said that it’s okay if I’m still in love with you.” She added, quietly. “And that you still love me.”

“I do.” His reply was equally quiet. “Spirits, Lin, I never stopped.”

“Neither did I.”

They sat quietly, and let the weight of their revelations sink in. Lin looked out to the glowing gold of the arena across the water. It felt so freeing to have finally spoken those words out loud, to have them off her chest.

“Sometimes I resent who our parents are.” Tenzin said eventually. “Because it would’ve been you if I hadn’t had to have a family.”

Lin frowned. “I thought you wanted a family.”

Tenzin sighed. “There was a part of me that felt obligated to have a family. I had no way of knowing that Harmonic Convergence would bring back the airbenders. Since it has, a small part of me has been insisting that had I known, we would have stayed together. It wouldn’t have mattered if we hadn’t had kids, because the airbenders would have come back anyway.”

“I wouldn’t have _ever_ wanted kids, Tenzin.” Lin insisted. “You really would have been okay with that?”

“Lin, we have Korra, Bolin, Mako, and Asami.” Tenzin laughed lightly. “Despite their ages, they make us run around in much the same way that my children currently do.”

Lin smiled despite herself. “I guess you’re right.”

“But to answer your question, yes. I would have been okay with it.” Tenzin looked down at his hands. “I was ready to be okay with it, too. But there was pressure from the White Lotus to marry someone with whom I could have kids.”

“Uncle Aang would’ve been okay with you not having kids?” She asked, skeptically.

“Dad and I talked about it more than you would think.” He said quietly. “He knew that we were in a serious relationship. I was getting ready to…well, I was nervous about talking to dad about it, because I didn’t want to let him down. I laid everything out for him, how I loved you and how you didn’t want kids and how I was ready to stay with you anyway. And then I talked about how I didn’t want to let our people down, seeing as we were the only two air benders at that point. You know what he said?"

“What?” Lin could barely find her voice. One thought stuck with her though. _What had he been getting ready to do_?

“He told me: ‘Tenizn, I could never be disappointed in what you decide.’ And somehow that made me feel both better and worse at the same time. As pressure started coming in from the White Lotus, I talked to him again. He seemed upset that they were trying to force me into a decision, and the pressure let up for a while after that. But then, dad died.” Tenzin took a breath. “The White Lotus all but jumped on me, barely giving me time to mourn him. Do you remember how you found me in the stables on the day of dad’s funeral, curled up on Oogi? They had just told me that I had a duty to the world now. It just all slid out of my control at that point.”

Lin was stuck between crying and screaming. Tears stung at the back of her throat, and she felt a fresh wave of anger burst through her, though not at Tenzin this time. “They _what?_ On the day of Uncle’s funeral? How _dare_ they manipulate your sadness into a sense of duty. Ten, if I had known…the White Lotus wouldn’t have been anywhere near us at Aang’s funeral.”

Tenzin shook his head. “I didn’t want anyone to know. I felt that they were right, that I owed it to dad and every single airbender that was lost in the genocide. As you know, I did want a family, but Lin, it wasn’t a ‘non-negotiable’ aspect for me. I would have been happy either way.”

She looked right at him. “What were you getting ready to do?”

He looked at her, confused.

“Before you said you were nervous to speak to your father. You said you were getting ready to do something, but you stopped.”

“I made you a necklace.” Tenzin said.

Lin felt her heart drop into her stomach. They really were facing everything head on tonight, weren’t they?

“A…necklace?”

He nodded.

“Like…an engagement necklace?” She could barely get the words out.

“Yes. I still have it.” He looked away. “It’s tucked away. I worked for months on it, and I’m very proud of how it turned out. I was going to give it to you, but, well. Things went sideways so fast. I want to apologize for how things ended, and how things went for years. It wasn’t fair to you, and I deserved every insult you hurled at me, and the near destruction of the temple was warranted as well.”

“Ten…” Lin took a breath. “If I had known, I wouldn’t have been nearly as mad. You deserved some of those insults, maybe, but not all of them. I spent a long time with that rage, and once it cooled down, I was sad. At first, I thought that you had accepted Pema’s advances because she was younger and prettier and would make an all around better wife than I ever could, and I was furious. I’m not proud of how I acted then, and I apologize for that. I’ve already apologized to Pema, although I’m not quite sure she believes me. And no matter how much of that is true, it makes more sense now. I understand. I’m just glad that we’re friends again. It feels good to finally have people that I care about back in my life.”

It was silent. The spirit portal was like a beacon in the middle of the night, and Lin idly wondered how Korra and Asami’s vacation was going.

“How do we make peace with this?” Lin asked. “The last thing I want to do is say or do something that would make my presence unwelcome on the island. I would never do something to come between you and Pema, and I know that you wouldn’t do anything either. I just worry that if we slowly start to become comfortable around each other again, that it will be taken the wrong way.”

“I think we just take it one day at a time, like we’ve been doing.” Tenzin responded. “It’s safe to say that sparring is off the table for the time being, though.”

His tone was teasing, and Lin couldn’t help but laugh. “I suppose we should talk about that too.”

“Probably.” His hand went to the back of his head. “We really walked into it, didn’t we?”

“There was absolutely no subtlety in the way we walked into it.” Lin agreed. “I knew full well what was going to happen, and so did you, and we still decided to do it. The fact that we did that so willingly is what scares me. And to dig myself into a deeper hole, I wanted to. I wanted to skirt that line, because I _missed_ it.”

Tenzin nodded. “Our sparring sessions were always…intense. I missed it too, and that’s why I invited you in. I told myself that it would be alright, and that we could make it through a session without anything happening. I knew as well as you did though, that sparring only ever ended one way for us once we got older.”

“How close were you to forgetting everything in that moment?” Lin asked quietly.

He sighed. “Closer than I’d like to admit.”

“Me too.”

And just like that, they were at the crux of it all. Both of them knew better, both of them would never do anything, and yet, they’d been a single slip up away from breaking every kind of rule that stood between them. Lin couldn’t help but feel like she did when he first invited her into the training room: that this was all a very bad idea.

“I’m glad we talked about this.” Lin reached out for his hand, and laced their fingers together. “I hope we can move forward with less bumps in the road.”

“I hope for the very same thing.”

—————————

Lin was awoken by a gust of wind through her open window, and she got up to close the blinds. She was surprised to find a small box on her windowsill, a note attached. With shaking hands, Lin opened the note to find Tenzin’s handwriting.

_Lin,_

_I’ve held onto this for so long now, but it was always meant for you. I hope that by giving it to you, we can both find some sense of closure._

_Ten_

“Oh, Ten.” She sighed, tears coming to her eyes.

She opened the box to find the most beautiful necklace she had seen in her life. The ribbon was a deep green, accented in the center with a smooth, circular jade stone. The design was the symbol for the earth kingdom, with the spirals that symbolized the air nation around it. She stared at it for what felt like an indefinite amount of time, before slipping it back in the box. Lin closed the blinds on her window, got back into bed, and placed the box on her bed stand.

A whole other future existed in that box, and Lin mourned it. She let tears fall until they didn’t anymore, and then she let herself rest.


End file.
